This weekend the Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival continues at venues throughout Vineyard Haven. The opening night ceremonies heralded in a new era as the first-ever film was screened at the new festival center located at 72 Beach Road in the Tisbury Marketplace.

The movie lineup continues through Sunday, at which point 22 films from around the world will have been showcased. A full schedule can be found online at mvfilmfest.com

It is unknown what the winner of this year’s Chilmark Road Race — Hugh Parker of New York city with a time of 16:07:29 — did to prepare for the race. He ran fast and shirtless in the morning downpour, crossing the tape nearly 30 seconds ahead of his closest competitor, David Melly of Newton, and the women’s winner Nnenna Lynch, also of New York city, who finished with a time of 19:21.27. Perhaps Hugh woke early, stretched and ran eight or nine miles just to warm up. He looked that fit and that youthful on Saturday morning.

My five-year-old son, Hardy, and I were kicking the soccer ball around the backyard and for the first time Hardy seemed engaged in the game rather than frustrated with the rule of not being able to use his hands. This was big progress. Up until the age of four, Hardy was a city boy, and I have to admit I hadn’t been doing enough to make sports a part of our lives. But since moving to the Island I have been determined to make up for lost time; especially with youth soccer just beginning.

I went fishing the other day at the jetty by the Vineyard Haven drawbridge. It was early evening, the sun beginning to set, and I was alone on the rocks. The sky was clear and on the horizon the mainland hovered like a thick slice of bread. The steamship chugged by sending four-foot swells my way and a seagull taunted me from above.

The Limpopo is a river in Botswana. It is also the name of a doughnut served at State Road Restaurant in West Tisbury. But this is not just any doughnut as anyone who as eaten one, or 30, say, in a week-long binge will attest. It is the perfect doughnut. Brown and slightly crispy on the outside. A brioche dough interior that is neither too dry nor too moist. And a constellation of sugar crumbs coating the outside, sweet but not cloying. To call this a mere doughnut would be like calling your dog just an another animal. It would not be right.

The Douro River runs through the middle of Portugal. It cuts west to east from the Spanish border until it spills into the Atlantic Ocean. Steep rugged cliffs, rising up four to five hundred metres, flank the route of the river. The heat in summer on those cliffs climbs to 120 degrees or more. There is no shade. The soil is baked dry. To walk upon it is to sink into layers of dust. It is a land not fit for people or for many other living things. And yet within this inhospitable terrain, not navigable by car or tractor or any other motorized accessory, lies the heart of the port wine industry and a grape so hardy its roots can tunnel up to 30 metres deep into the rocky soil in search of water.

At the end of last Saturday’s afternoon performance at the Yard Mary Paula Hunter, the founder of the dance company Jump, took a bow with her dancers, all of them teenage girls. The girls wore what one might expect classically trained dancers to wear. Leotards, ballet shoes, a tutu or two here and there.

Ms. Hunter, on the other hand, wore the ragged remains of a wedding dress. She was also covered in food.

Have you ever thought about your thoughts? Not in the generic sense as in, wow I can't believe I had such a lustful thought, ugly thought, pathetically mundane or masterfully intelligent thought. That's kid stuff. A dime a dozen. How about going deeper into the thought machine itself and its continuous letting loose of one after another, after another new idea or impulse, ad nausea. It's a busy factory up there, the mind churning and burning with rapid-fire suggestions, reactions, negations and desires. So exhausting, but what can one do?

The first rut was late this year. Perhaps it was the warm weather or just the vagaries of love. But it doesn't really matter why. What matters is that the second rut has begun. What a second rut means for the deer is that the does are in heat again, the ones that didn’t find a mate the first time around or the young does who weren't ready yet last month.

The pitch is the first step in an often very long process of making a movie. It’s what gets the money people to open, or close, their wallets. Sometimes it's a big concept. An asteroid is about to smash into the earth and only Bruce Willis can save us. Other times, wild comparisons are evoked to assure its marketability. It's Terminator meets Harry Met Sally with a side of Toy Story. In any case, the idea is to go big and dramatic in just a few sentences because that's all the time a writer has to convince a producer the project has merit.